


madly, madly

by plantyourtreeswithme



Category: Rope (1948)
Genre: Explicit Language, Homophobic Language, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 08:21:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20306386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plantyourtreeswithme/pseuds/plantyourtreeswithme
Summary: It seems Brandon has been asking Phillip to follow him for their whole lives.





	madly, madly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Verbivore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbivore/gifts).

> For one of my kindest fans and friends in this tiny fandom: a tableau of their life together before the events of the movie.
> 
> It's been quite a while since I've visited these two! Thought they deserved a bit of happiness.
> 
> I changed their schools from Harvard to Oberlin and Princeton, just because I thought it'd be more realistic, and because the thought of Brandon trying to escape David (but failing) once they become adults is intriguing. Hope you enjoy :)

He realizes it a week after Phillip is gone.

"Fuck," he announces to the empty room, closing his book with a snap.

In all the years they've known each other, they've _just_ been close friends. Very close friends. So close, in fact, it could be construed that they were perhaps even together - and anyone who was stupid and smug enough to voice this thought aloud in front of Brandon was taken care of, quickly and mercilessly. And so what if Phillip asked Brandon what he'd been doing when he got back to their dorm? So what if the bastard in question came to class the next day with a sprained wrist or a busted lip, or didn't bother to show up at all?

He remembers their goodbye: a long, long hug, and Phillip's cheek pressed up against his own, and the way he couldn't quite let go of Phillip's waist as they stood on Brandon's mother's porch.

The farmhouse, and the summers they had spent there, and the chaste kisses Brandon had pressed to Phillip's forehead after an afternoon spent lounging in the sun by the lake, and...

Why hasn't he realized sooner?

The cold winters spent in the basement of their hall: Phillip rolling his way through grand chords on the dusty Steinway in the corner - in sore need of a tuning - and Brandon, sitting on the floor next to the bench, resting his head against Phillip's thigh and letting Rachmaninoff wash over him and thinking, _Is there no finer pleasure in life than this?_

And now: Phillip gone from him, off to Oberlin, probably in the lap of some other fag who is taller and lankier and more good-looking than Brandon, and something seizes up in his veins, and he goes to get his coat from the closet downstairs.

* * *

"Where are you going?" his mother asks from the kitchen. He hears her as if from underwater, as if he is a great distance away.

_Phillip in swimming trunks, curls slicked back from his face and the gentle Connecticut sun beating down on him - and perhaps even a kiss, stolen while they are both submerged in the pool._

"Phillip forgot something," he says weakly, "thought I'd bring it to him." She knows it is a lie; she does not stop him.

_"Left this in our room," he says softly as he slides the textbook onto Phillip's desk - seats himself at the one in front, pretending not to see Phillip's look of gratitude and sheer, utter devotion._

"That's awful sweet of you, Brandon," she says with a nice smile. He thinks he sees why his father fell in love with her.

_The letter from his mother: his father is dead, and Phillip nearly tears his arm off trying to stop him from killing David in the courtyard - David, who made fun of him for crying - David, who still has a father, and an incredibly rich one at that, and maybe David is the one who deserves to cry now -_

_And then later, Phillip holding Brandon tight, so tight he cannot breathe, as he sobs into the pianist's shoulder and lets his fingers - his fingers, Phillip's fingers - caress him._

"Be safe, Brandon?"

He smiles at her. He knows she hasn't been the same since her husband's accident.

"Of course, Mother. I'll be gone three days at most."

And then he is at the station, thinking of how he is in love with Phillip Morgan, and wants nothing more than to be in his arms again.

* * *

He is set to leave for New Jersey in two weeks.

He is on a train to Oberlin, with no letter of warning or explanation other than he has to tell Phillip that he loves him.

He is sitting on the steps of the conservatory and he is not quite sure what to do with himself, and it's late August but it's just a bit chilly, and he's thinking, _I hope Phillip brought his winter coat with him,_ and someone is walking up to him and saying, "Brandon?"

And he looks up and sees Phillip, and then those soft arms are around him again but he wants more, can't reach enough of Phillip's skin through his long overcoat -

\- a few minutes later, they're in his dorm next to the music building - limbs strewn out on Phillip's bed, Phillip on top of Brandon and rutting against his thigh, and Brandon is saying between gasps, "Phillip, I love you - I love you, I love you -"

Phillip looks up from where he's been planting kisses and love bites on Brandon's neck. Brandon is pleased to see his entire face flushed pink, his pupils wide and dark with arousal; pleased to see his lips trembling as he parts them to say, "What?"

Brandon swallows, runs a hand through Phillip's hair. "I love you," he repeats. "I'm in love with you."

"Oh," Phillip says, and kisses him quite frantically.

"You just now realized this?" he says when he pulls away, leaving Brandon quite out of breath.

"Yesterday, yes."

"I see. Is that why you came to visit, then?"

"Well, Phillip, you must know by now that I really like to do these types of serious things in person."

"I suppose I do," Phillip breathes, sitting up and laying his hands on Brandon's chest. "I know you better than anyone else."

Brandon stills, itching for the words he wants Phillip to say, and Phillip grins down at him.

"What?"

"Say it," he implores. He reaches up, strokes Phillip's cheek.

Phillip smiles like the sun, like Brandon's muse, and he says, "I love you, Brandon."

* * *

After Phillip has fucked him into the mattress, they lie beside each other, panting, and Brandon overflows with affection.

"Come to New Jersey with me," he says, a little desperately.

"I can't, Brandon."

"They've got a music school -"

"Brandon -"

"Come home," he says. "Please."

Phillip kisses him. He tastes like starlight; like glory; like missed opportunities.

* * *

The summer of '45 ebbs and flows around them, and they end up on the farm again. Hundreds of letters and countless phone calls later, they've graduated.

Brandon went to all of Phillip's recitals; watched him bow on every stage, listened to him play every piece imaginable. Phillip visited him at Princeton when their breaks didn't match up.

"We would've had all the same holidays if you'd just gone to Harvard like we planned," Phillip teases him, and Brandon still does not tell him the truth: that he abandoned his lifelong dream the moment he came across David filling out his own application in the prep school library.

Brandon took him all around campus and to as many restaurants as they could find; introduced him to his "girlfriend" and whoever she was cheating on him with at the time; had sex in his dorm while his terrible roommate was out, and leaned out the window afterwards, sharing a cigarette.

Now his mother comes out of the house. She squints in the sunlight, looks at the two of them sitting in the grass.

"You boys want a drink?" she calls. Brandon sees two glasses in her hands.

Phillip smiles.

They drink their whiskey and hide their cigarettes from his mother, and watch the chickens roaming the yard outside their coop.

"Work starts soon," Brandon says slowly. He doesn't want this night to end.

Brandon has his office job in Upper Manhattan, and Phillip is set to teach music starting September, at a grade school in rural Illinois.

"My home town," he told Brandon on the train ride back from Oberlin. "My parents set it up for me. It'll pay well."

"You should help me find an apartment," Brandon says softly. "Come with me next week."

"Oh, I don't know, Brandon. It'd be awfully close to when I have to leave."

"Come on, we can pick out a penthouse together," he teases. He reaches forward; laces his hand together with Phillip's ivory-kissed fingers.

His companion gives his golden, pealing laughter. Brandon feels he could look upon God and hold his ground, instilled as he is with His grace in the form of Phillip's smiles and lovely glances and honey-brown eyes.

* * *

"Phillip," he says. They are lying in bed together; it is the dead of night.

He finally convinced Phillip to live with him, in the Manhattan penthouse. He promised he would provide for them as a man provides for his wife, with his father's money and soon, his own. He vowed to help him look for a job, or to at least book him a few gigs every once in a while to keep him from dying of boredom. He kissed Phillip over and over and over again as they broke in the new furniture.

"We should have a dinner party," he'd joked; "get all our friends to bring us housewarming gifts," and Phillip had given him a look and stuck his tongue out.

Phillip's profile is silhouetted, framed by the moonlight streaming through the window.

He wants a kiss. He wants a smoke.

"Phillip."

Phillip stirs; says something bleary and vague.

Brandon traces the freckles across the bridge of Phillip's nose until he is awake, stifling a yawn.

"Wha's'it, Brandon?"

He smiles.

"Do you remember Nietzsche?"

**Author's Note:**

> I'd appreciate it greatly if you left a comment telling me what you enjoyed about this piece. Thank you for reading!


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